Cheers. The shots are cropped, but not dramatically or so much that it drastically alters the composition. Usually just to eliminate unsightly parts of the background, horizons, etc, or create or remove symmetry. I'm from the school of thought that cropping and PPing in general should be used to refine or enhance an image, not transform it.
I agree it is very difficult to leave space for the subject to move into the frame. The shooting was compromised by my location, where besides coming partially towards me, the bikes were also accelerating through 100~110mph, meaning you can't do a smooth steady sweep to pan it, but instead have to rapidly accelerate as you track through. (I would've moved, but I was also wearing an orange jump suit and waving the odd flag, so had to stay put ). Nonetheless I was pretty happy with some of the results, as it was only my second time trying proper panning shots of moving vehicles. The first time was the LFS karting meet last year, where the subjects weren't quite as difficult to track.
The focus points on the 40D I borrowed weren't ideally located so I just stuck with the centre point and tried to keep it over the front wheel. The 70-200 is an amazingly fast focussing lens but I often found myself wanting the extra reach of a 300, despite the 1.6 crop factor of the sensor.
The Tammy 17-50 is lovely. I often find myself wanting a bit more reach on the long end, but physics dictates the need to be realistic - if it was a 17-70/2.8, the physical characteristics of the lens would be somewhat different, as would the price tag. But the image quality is superb at all apertures, even the widest ones.
I do not calibrate my monitor with any sort of equipment. I have done a soft calibration with a few websites though. My prints from Adorama.com came back perfectly matching what I see on the display.
I wouldn't call it deep red. I wouldn't call it pink either. There is a pinkness to it and I could imagine the car really being that color. What color was it to the naked eye? Deep red or red skewed towards some pink?
Went out yesterday to a place called Monk Farm, about 20 miles away from York. They have loads of animals such as deer, cows, alpacas, wallaby's, baby goats+lambs and pigs that seemed to be as large as small horses.
Good day out, once you get past the kids play area (that was packed) you'll be pretty much on your own to look at the animals in peace - I was amazed at how many little people were in awe of the wallaby enclosure. We sat and watched this Wallaby on the ground for about 30 minutes, with its stomach moving around and then all off a sudden out of the blue a baby's head popped out from the mothers pouch - I think we got to see a pretty rare sight.
Anyway, enough of the review - here's some photo's. Although I'd like to say that it was quite late in the day and the way the place was built the sun always seemed to be behind what I was taking pictures of - bugger.
Please please please click on the full view links, the quality is much better. If you are new to deviantart - just click on the picture if its small - it enlarges it to proper size.
Some shots of my friend's Austin Mini from 1964. Can't wait taking some pictures when it passes mot and can be driven somewhere with more worthy backround.
Was just testing my camera, and I'm pleased with it so far. Need to take a some sort of cloth for the dust next time though.
Where on earth do you get those cars from to photograph?
Well I got my camera back from Sony this weekend, after it had been with them to correct the backfocus issue I had. So what have they done? Yay, they've ruined it! It now front focusses to such an extreme that it's pretty much useless. Grrr.